


half the trunk is rotten

by synchronicities



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: 'five shoots vanya in the finale au', Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-10
Updated: 2019-06-10
Packaged: 2020-04-23 13:38:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19152133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/synchronicities/pseuds/synchronicities
Summary: "My sole confidante," she’d called him, and he’d shot her.--1x10 AU - Five, not Allison, carries the gun. Things play out differently, but in the end they all still come home.





	half the trunk is rotten

**Author's Note:**

> Since my last TUA fic, I have learned approximately three things:  
> 1\. In the comics (which I haven’t read), Five deadass stops the apocalypse by shooting Vanya in the head  
> 2\. [In show canon, he was Vanya’s favorite sibling](https://littlehobbit13.tumblr.com/post/183042834234/meals-became-the-one-time-of-day-to-be)  
> 3\. #1 and #2 upset me so I’m taking y’all with me 😊
> 
> Title from Radical Face's "Bad Blood"

In the end, Five gets what he wanted – a gun pointed at the herald of the apocalypse.

He should have known better than to wish for anything of the sort.

Five knows more about the universe than anybody; he has spent decades turning string theory and relativity and probability over and over in his mind and anything he could get his hands on – stray papers, blackboards, empty walls, lines in the sand. He had trusted his own equations – had deemed the gardener in rural Ohio, the teacher in Panama, and the construction worker in Pakistan all acceptable losses. He had trusted the Commission, when they had pinpointed Harold Jenkins as the key.

And yet, somehow, he hadn’t foreseen this, Vanya murderous and vengeful, arm raised to attack him.

_My sister. My sister. My sister._

His aim steadies. His fingers go taut on the trigger.

Allison’s face, bone-white and ten feet in the air, morphs into a horrified expression. Diego opens his mouth to yell –

Vanya crumples to the ground, red blooming into the white of her tuxedo.

* * *

Some hours later, Klaus slides into a seat across the library tables. He looks more exhausted than usual, carries a heavy bone-deep tiredness that his drugs could never match. If he were to guess, Five would think he’d been crying. But he doesn’t bother looking up and turns back to the equations.

“They said I’d find you here,” Klaus tries, pushing aside one of the stacks of physics textbooks so he can see Five better.

Again, Five elects to ignore him. The numbers run themselves in his head for the seventeenth time. Something must have been different. This couldn’t have been the key.

His brother huffs in his direction. “ _Five_.”

“ _What_ ,” Five shoots back. Suddenly, he feels very, very thirteen.

Klaus makes an unidentifiable noise but manages to shut his mouth, instead filling the silence with increasingly loud, rhythmic taps of his foot against the tiled floor. Eventually Five levels him with a glare, which Klaus seems to take as an invitation to talk.

“She’s out of surgery,” he says. He lets the words fall in between them, and Five doesn’t let his eyes close, forbids his shoulders from collapsing in relief.

“I knew she would be,” he replies, but it rings false even to his own ears. Pulling the trigger had been a gamble, but he’s not sure he would try again if Vanya hadn’t survived. ( _He would, he would._ )

“Hey,” Klaus tries again. His eyes are wide and beseeching; a week ago, Five would have rolled his eyes and turned away.

But so much has changed. He schools his features into a mask of impassiveness and raises his head to face him. “What do you want me to say, Klaus? That I shouldn’t have done it? That I should’ve _doomed_ the entire damn world for–”

“Our sister?” Klaus’s shoulders fall. “I wish you didn’t. It’s _Vanya_. But we _get_ why you did it, Five. It’s so shitty, but we do.”

Five frowns and turns away. “Your point?”

“You have to own up to it,” and here Klaus’s voice sounds very, very thin. “That’s our sister, Five.”

* * *

When they arrive at the hospital the curtains are drawn around Vanya’s bed. Five wrinkles his nose at the smell of antiseptic. Allison is alone in the sitting room, Luther and Diego evidently having gone to secure accommodations elsewhere.

 _Still KO_ , she scrawls onto her pad. _Might wake up soon but not sure_.

Five turns to the bed, considers that behind the curtain his littlest sister is hanging onto life when only hours before she had been threatening to end the world. He still has trouble reconciling Vanya, uncertain but concerned, carefully cleaning his arm wound in her dark apartment, and the vengeful whirlwind he’d shot. How much had he missed? How much had they _all_ missed? He turns away, but his sister frowns at him before looking back to her pad and scribbling something furiously.

 _5_ , Allison writes. _Stay_. A pause. She bites her lip, considering, before turning the page and writing again. Klaus’s hand tightens on his shoulder. _We have time._

* * *

Five springs awake when someone snaps their fingers in front of his face. Out of reflex he shoots out an arm and curses when it lands on someone’s palm.

“Calm down, what the fuck,” Diego says, as if his first instinct isn’t to stab people who get too close. He lets go of Five’s hand and clears his throat. “She’s awake,” Diego starts. “Luther and Allison are with her now.”

Five nods at him in acknowledgement and moves to step into a portal, but Diego’s arm moves lightning-fast. “Don’t.”

“ _What_ ,” Five snaps, trying to wriggle out of Diego’s tight grip.

Diego’s frown deepens before he breathes in and out, his face relaxing. “You shouldn’t be in there,” he hisses. In the fluorescent light of the hospital suite, he looks very pale.

“Hey, hey, hey,” Klaus says, approaching them with his hands up. “Allison and I wanted him here.”

“Keep your voice down,” Diego sighs, before he raises a finger to squeeze between his eyebrows. “It’s a bad idea for you to see her now, Five. Mentally she’s _basically_ still in that auditorium, and the only things keeping her from trying to end the world again are guilt and military-grade sedatives. What do you think’ll happen if she sees the person who shot her?”

Five waves his hand, as if it wills the sudden hurt away. “I told you so,” he says to Klaus, more to be spiteful than anything else, and turns away from them both. “Where are we crashing?”

Diego sighs again, loudly. It’s the worst. Five wonders when he picked up the habit. His brother hands him a sheet of paper with an address scribbled on it in Diego’s neat handwriting, which Five takes with a curt nod.

* * *

He doesn’t go there first, though.

There’s a bookstore on Tenth that cropped up in the years he was gone. Five knows its location like breathing, had found it a safe haven in the early years – its storeroom, newer than anything else on the block, had survived the first apocalypse largely unscathed. Everything had crumbled but books, knowledge, learning – that had felt like a good sign.

Five can even recall the general location where he’d first picked up the book up – a discount shelf in the back, next to the restrooms. _Extra Ordinary_ , the paper still crisp and white, the cover still stiff. Vanya stares at him from the front cover, the only photograph of his family he’d had left. His own copy had been aged and faded, with Vanya’s scathing descriptions of their family scribbled over with quantum physics and equations. Delores had always balked at it, but – paper was hard to come by. He’d lost it in the rubble when their house had gone up in flames, and so he skims through the book almost with fresh eyes. He’s tempted to slip the book into his jacket pocket and teleport out of the store, but there’s no one else in the store, the girl at the counter is young and fresh-faced, and they’re trying to be _better_ , so he walks up and pays with Diego’s credit card with shaking hands. He walks a couple of blocks before teleporting, too.

The large four-bedroom townhouse Allison is apparently bankrolling is…bland. Five hadn’t liked the Hargreeves mansion’s mismatched period décor, had seen Reginald in each Persian rug and every Victorian lampshade, but even that doomed house had touches of their family in it – in the rings on the table left by Vanya’s teacups, the scarves Klaus left around, the knife marks from Diego’s practices on the doors. The townhouse, for all its picture-perfect catalog décor, has yet to feel lived-in. Regardless, this is apparently home for the time being, and so he selects a fashionable teal armchair and curls up in it, Vanya’s familiar words lulling him into something resembling comfort.

 _My sole confidante_ , she’d called him, and he’d shot her. He inhales, trying to tamp down a sob.

He rereads the phrase multiple times before wincing as she goes on to mention his disappearance. He’d held on to her description of that day for years, because the truth is that he barely remembered it in the later years – the cocksure words he’d fired at his father, the triumph of jumping a few months into the future for the first time. But he remembers Vanya’s gaze across the table, wide and brown and worried and _caring_ , clear as day _._ He thinks of her unfeeling, light-ringed eyes in the auditorium and falls into another fitful sleep.

* * *

His siblings come and go in shifts; Allison fluttering in and out throughout the day bringing various grocery bags, Diego’s boots stomping in the foyer at two in the morning. Five has yet to see all four of them in the townhouse at the same time – always, at least one is in the hospital, another running errands, and it doesn’t help his own antsiness. The townhouse feels small, and despite himself, he misses Grace's humming, Pogo's sturdy wisdom. When he sleeps he sees Vanya, vengeful and angry, or Delores, better off without him, or the Handler, smug and tutting. He’s always turning after some shadows in the corner, little tricks of the light, wondering if the Commission is coming after him, here to stop him playing house with his family.

 _Or maybe_ , he thinks, a little sourly – _this was their plan all along_. It was always hard to tell, and he’d sometimes found himself questioning their motivations, but never so much as now. It would be some cosmic joke, wouldn’t it? All those years alone, only to come home and nearly kill his youngest sister to save the world.

Klaus shoots him pitying smiles and Allison gives him little updates, notes like _she’s off life support_ and _she’s eating solids again_ , and he feels resentful, presses his fingers into the book in his jacket pocket to feel better.  It doesn’t help, and the first time they’re all in the living room, he says it out loud. “I want to visit Vanya.”

Luther and Diego look stricken. In any other situation he would have laughed at them agreeing.

“I told you,” Diego says. “It might not be good for her.”

Five snorts. “And Luther gets to visit her, after their disastrous little trip to the family dungeon, which you guys co-signed, by the way.”

Diego frowns. “Hey–”

“Oh, that’s rich,” Luther hisses, “Coming from Mr. ‘whatever it takes’.”

“I was backing _you_ up,” Five snaps back.

Klaus’s eyes are darting between the four of them. “Guys –”

“God,” Diego moans, bringing his hand to his forehead. “This makes me wanna wish the world _actually_ ended.”

Five rolls his eyes. “I don’t know if you missed the memo, Diego, but we won. We stopped it.”

“And you accomplished this by shooting the person responsible, just like you always wanted, huh?” Diego sneers, nostrils flaring. “It was _your_ choice, Five.”

Klaus looks helplessly at Allison, before looking back at Five. “Hey.”

Five scoffs, too far gone. “Oh, and what would you have done, stabbed her instead? In case you forgot, we were _all_ going all in. This isn’t just my fault, so stop ganging up on me.”

Allison stomps her foot and scribbles _STOP IT_ , but it goes unnoticed in the process of Five tackling Diego in the back. Diego grunts and tries to grapple with him, and they careen straight into one of the expensive-looking floor lamps. Five closes his eyes at the sound of shattering glass.

“ _GUYS_ ,” someone else yells. Five’s hold on Diego goes slack. Somewhere in the room, he hears Allison drop her pen.

“Ben,” Luther says, because it _is_ Ben standing in the middle of the living room, glowing a bright, corporeal blue, arms crossed. Next to him, Klaus’s expression is a mix of shock and delight.

“God, listen to yourselves,” Ben says. “Vanya nearly _caused the apocalypse_ three days ago and you all are standing around here arguing about whose fault it is?”

There is only minute satisfaction to be taken in the ways his brothers’ faces fall. Five drops onto the floor and looks away, only the tiniest bit guilty.

“What are you saying we should do then?” Luther says, frowning.

“I’m saying that we all might have taken that shot if it came down to it, who the fuck knows,” Ben says, crossing his arms. “And I don’t think standing around and blaming each other is going to help. Our _sister_ is in the _hospital_. That's the priority. We’re going to have to find a way to deal with it, fuck our issues.”

 _I AGREE_ , Allison writes. _& 5 gets to visit V. _She shoots him a smile, and for a moment Five feels absurdly grateful, even as the rising dread of confronting Vanya curls around his heart.

“Vanya’s going to come home soon,” Klaus adds, twiddling his fingers. “She’s going to need our help to manage her powers. We have to present a united front.”

Luther sighs and rubs the space between his eyebrows. “You’re right. I’m sorry, Five. You should get a chance to talk with her too, and I was against it because I was distancing myself from my own fault in the matter.”

“That’s really mature,” Diego says, his lip quirking. Five understands now that it’s his way of showing remorse, and he nods in acknowledgement.

“I guess holding hands and kumbayah’s the new status quo?” Klaus says. He’s grinning.

Ben’s face breaks into a small smile, the sight of which fills Five with relief. “Could be worse.”

Klaus claps Diego on the shoulder. “Brothers, man.”

 _SIBLINGS, MAN_ , Allison scribbles, which makes them all smile.

Later, Allison turns to show Five her notepad. _For what it’s worth_ , her words say, handwriting neat and purposeful, _I think there’s always a choice._ She turns the page. _I don’t think I would have done what you did._ Flip. _But it is what it is, and the world’s okay. **We’re** all okay._ Her hand pauses as she turns to the next page, and she levels him with a meaningful look. _We work from there_.

Five raises his head to look at her. Whatever Allison sees on his face makes her smile, and she wraps an arm around his shoulders. It takes a while for him to lean into the touch, but once he does she gives his shoulder another squeeze. _It’ll be ok :)_ , she scrawls with her other hand, and for the first time, Five lets himself believe it.

* * *

The day Vanya is supposed to come home, Five teleports into her hospital room for the second time. It still smells like antiseptic and he hates the drone of the machine monitoring her vitals. He draws back the curtain, arms trembling, and opens his eyes.

The sight of her nearly makes his knees buckle. He’d killed so many people and her blood had been _so red_ , but here Vanya is, paler and thinner and a little worse for wear, but whole and breathing and _alive_. He stifles a gasp and slides into the chair next to the bed, watches the rise and fall of her chest. They’ll have to start figuring out her powers, now, all of them, and he can only hope that they do it properly.

And then Vanya opens her eyes and says, in a voice low and scratch from disuse – “Hi, Five.”

Involuntarily, stupidly, suddenly, his eyes fill with tears, and he scrubs them away furiously with one hand. Vanya eyes him, before her hand moves to link her fingers with his. He tenses, but she squeezes his hand gently, and he forces himself to relax and look her in the eye. Her gaze is warm and steady, and for the first time since his return he feels anchored, like things have once again started to make sense.

He sniffles, before smiling briefly at her. He takes a deep breath. “Hi, Vanya.”


End file.
